Paul Samuelson used mathematics to formulate influential economic theories and, in 1970, became the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. He was awarded the prize for actively contributing to raising the level of analysis in economic science.
Samuelson was born on 15th May 1915, in Gary, US, in a family that emigrated from Poland. In 1923, he moved to Chicago, where he began studying economics at the university. He presented his doctoral thesis at Harvard in 1941. Named an assistant professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1940, Samuelson eventually became an institute professor during his longtime association with the university.
He served as an advisor to two American presidents, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson. Samuelson was probably the most influential economist of the later 20th century. He wrote the best-selling book ‘Economics’ in 1948, which was later translated into 20 languages; it was selling 50,000 copies a year a half century after it first appeared.
Samuelson died on 13th December 2009, at the age of 94.
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